“Empowering the profession” drives OSA members for ambitious 2024

OSA members celebrated a successful year – with a growing, cohesive, voice – and the pledge to move optics forward by fully embracing the OSA’s new tagline “Empowering the Profession.”

The OSA AGM and annual lunch last week saw positive news for members on the progress being made by the DICOM Task and Finish Group, of which the OSA is an active contributor. The group, made up of NHS England, Royal College of Ophthalmology, College of Optometry, The OSA and key NHS suppliers, is gearing up to produce new standards in 2024. These will drive interoperability between devices and optical communities.

The keen focus on E-Health has brought a flood of new members to the OSA during 2023 as recognition of the leadership becomes clear

“Our E-Health Group has been fantastically successful, with businesses seeing the importance of working together and collectively addressing the grey areas in E-Health and the routes to adoption. The DICOM group is essential for moving optics forward with the OSA acting as independent assessors during this part of the process. We are developing a long-term partnership with the NHS to support their eye-care transformation plans, not just on the present topics, but for everything else which will emerge in the near future, where supplier engagement will benefit the common goal,” said OSA Chair Roy Stoner.

Roy praised the dedication and insight of Karl Jeebaun and Stephanie Campbell who lead the OSA E-Health Group, announcing that significant progress has been made throughout 2023 and is expected to continue into 2024, when the OSA hopes to see some of the early goals are achieved.

Following the OSA’s AGM, all aspects of UK optics gathered at the Bloomsbury Hotel in London for the annual lunch. The broad spectrum of OSA suppliers who provide diagnostics, frames, lenses, lab services, practice management, finance and software, plus dry eye monitoring and treatment suppliers, gathered for the annual event.

**l-r :Ian Humphrey, Leonie Milliner, Luke Stevens- Burt, Roy Stoner, Daryl Newsome, Elizabeth Shilling and Alistair Bridges**

Key optical organisations also attended, representing the eagerness for industry and profession to work together; they included leaders from ABDO, BCLA, College of Optometrists, FODO, General Optical Council and the Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers.